


A Drink

by LoquaciousLagomorph



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Blood, Morbid, Suicide, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28883154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoquaciousLagomorph/pseuds/LoquaciousLagomorph
Summary: After a fight, Logan and Peter have a talk and a drink. It escalates.
Relationships: Logan (X-Men) & Piotr Rasputin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	A Drink

"Let's get a drink, Pete."

That was how it started. "Let's get a drink, Pete." 

It usually meant a long talk and then a bar fight.

Nobody else went along with the two, for good reason. Drinks between Wolverine and Colossus were never boring and almost always personal. A fighting mood was necessary if you were going to join in.

So the two of them clambered quietly down into the little bar area. Didn't bother to turn on all the lights. Didn't needle with the expensive drinks, no.

They came in and pulled up stools by the bar. Logan got to pouring, and Piotr sat down and hung his head, taking the glass delicately when it was passed to him.

Logan let out a long, growly sigh, sitting himself beside the bigger man. 

"Talk to me."

Piotr's eyes flickered to Logan for just a moment. With one finger, he twirled his glass around.

"Pete…" Logan warned reproachfully.

Piotr wrapped one arm around himself, pulling his knees in tight as if to wrench his words out. "I meant what I said, friend. I don't know what more you want from me."

A huff. Logan leaned forward, pressing his shoulder against Piotr's and trying to force eye contact. "Nah. That was stupid of you."

A shot drank, a shot poured, and an added "pretty pathetic, too."

Piotr sucked in a deep breath, but made no argument.

"What was it you said, exactly? There at the end? 'I don't belong here,' that was it, right?" Logan leaned in uncomfortably close, but Piotr made no move to retreat or acknowledge him. "Now, do I have deja vu, or have you and I had this conversation before?"

Piotr nodded heavily at that, dragging a hand through his hair.

"Then, pray tell, why are we sitting here--" Logan jabbed his finger into the bar-- "having it again?"

Finally, Piotr granted him a piercing glare. "Because it is true."

"Really? You believe that?"

"Yes."

They both stared at each other, cleared their throats, took a shot, filled their cups again, and went quiet.

"So, tell me, then, who does belong here, Pete? And why don't you? You some sort of...special case, or something?"

"There is so much I can not atone for… I am danger to others."

Logan scowled like he had just bitten into a lemon. "Oh, really? Really. What about Mags, huh? What about Annie? Jeanie? Shit, what about me? You feel the same about all of us, huh? Just dying to tear into us too, right?"

Piotr opened his mouth to protest.

Logan held up an interrupting hand. "Don't give me any of that. How many times've you laid yourself on the line to save some sorry son of a bitch who didn't even want it? How many times've you been the first to say 'I forgive you'? You really think you did something so bad that we can't have you around anymore?"

More silence. More shots.

Logan swallowed, then said "stop being so fucking pathetic. You're better than this, Pete. You ain't some...some kicked puppy for Christsake…"

"You are right, friend…" Piotr said slowly. "There is a difference between me and a dog…"

He folded his arms and put his weight against the bar.

"A dog that bites gets put down. Instead, I have been kenneled."

Hands slapped against the counter top, rattling the glasses. "Now you stop that!" Logan demanded. 

Piotr's face was stern and serious, a sign that he was not going to stop. "I am so alone Logan!" It was the alcohol beginning its course that loosened him enough to say this. Otherwise, there would have never been a word. "We have been all around the world, seen so many things and I…No matter where we went, or what we did, I have always been so alone. And the worst part? I deserve it!"

"That's a bald-headed lie!" Logan declared. "Listen to yourself! Stop your fucking moping! Look, you've got me, and Kurt--"

"You two only keep me around because you think it's funny!" Piotr exclaimed. It was his turn to slap the countertop.

Flabbergasted, Logan asked "hell is that supposed to mean!?"

"Face it, Logan!" Piotr's hands went to the air. "You two either rope me into things because you feel bad for me, or because you want to poke fun at me! 

A shocked laugh. "Oh, and what'd you want us to do? Coddle you? Baby you?"

Piotr grit his teeth. "I wanted someone to be my friend the way you two were friends with each other!"

There was a collective inhale, and Piotr threw back a few drinks. 

"But that... that is never going to happen…" Piotr said mournfully. "I am never going to mean that much to somebody. I just get used. It is what I do. It... it is like...my body isn't even mine anymore…" as if to punctuate this thought, Piotr wrapped his arms around himself. "It doesn't stop. Somebody will take control of me again, and I will be unable to do anything. It keeps happening. I get turned into a threat, and…"

He sighed.

"...Everyone here hates me. I don't...I can't blame them. It has never bothered me before, but I'm tired, Logan. I'm so tired all of the time. I miss myself, if that makes any sense."

Pete seemed so vulnerable and Logan didn't want him to clam up again. He struggled to use a more approachable tone.

"...See, that's where you're wrong, Pete." He extended his hand to place on top of Piotr's. "I don't hate you. I'm piss poor at using my words but...I'm gonna sit here and fight for you, cause you won't do it yourself. I'm gonna be for you what you are to others, you got it? Even if everybody else hates you. You and me...we're a lot alike. I get mad alright, but I don't hate you, Pete, I promise I don't."

There was a small moment of silence where Piotr's countenance teetered the line between mournful and pleased. He sighed, removing his grasp on his shot glass. Blue eyes flickered dully to blue.

"You should…" he whispered, curling thick, cold, calloused fingers around Logan's warm, small hand.

"...you will…"

The next moments happened quickly, in hindsight, yet seemed also to last for years once put through the film of memory.

It began with a small crack.

Logan let out a shout of surprise, twisting and turning in sudden agony--

Blood. Bone. Piotr was crushing his wrist. 

"Petey, let go! That's too tight, you're hurting me--!" Logan exclaimed. He clawed at Piotr's grasp.

In a flash, Piotr replaced skin and blood with metal and energy. The clatter of Piotr's stool to the ground, shoved out of the way as he stomped to his feet. Logan was thrust high in the air by his arm.

Logan wheezed in shock, kicking, growling, spitting. "What the fuck are you doing!? Peter, stop!"

Colossus casted down only a sad grin as his response. A second, metal hand descended upon the broken wrist, where adamantium and veins were exposed. He began squeezing gradually up the length of Logan's arm, drawing out screams and wails, pain and confusion, a fountain of blood. Like a yogurt tube. It could almost be comical. Almost.

The point of this torture was soon revealed as Logan's claws were dragged scrapingly to the air. Piotr helped guide them out of their place behind Logan's knuckles.

"Stop!" Logan was yelling. "Stop, don't do this, Peter you idiot, stop! Don't! Please don't, stop it--"

Piotr set the tips of the claws to his throat, a pleased look taking control of his face. 

"Shh…" The noise made as if Logan were a fussy baby, not a grown man held in the grip of a metal Colossus, arm maimed and gushing blood, as if-- as if he weren't about to be used in his friend's suicide.

Piotr soothed, "it's okay. It will be okay."

For a blissful moment, there was no movement. Only the sound of Logan's blood dressing the floor. He hung, a broken rag doll, from those two painful hands. The tips of his claws now testing, unwillingly, the skin of his distressed friend's neck.

Maybe Piotr was regretting this irrational action. White, aimless eyes covered the length of Logan's pathetic figure. As if Piotr didn't recognize him. Or maybe the bar. Or, maybe, himself.

Contemplation. A reprieve. A chance.

Logan could feel his wrist struggling to mend itself. Could feel the pulse around vice-grip, mashing his flesh and muscle.

"Petey," he ground out. He could appeal to the better nature of his friend. He had to.

"Please, stop. Think about what you're doing. Don't... don't do it, please. I don't wanna do this, Pete, please..."

Piotr blinked, then swayed on his feet. "...'m tired, Logan. 'm so tired…"

Logan almost sighed in relief. "I know," he said, more choked and forced than he intended-- though it couldn't be helped, with the pain and the blood loss. "I know, Pete. Just...just set me down. Let's talk about this. Really talk about this, okay?"

Peter's eyes were glued to the remains of Logan's arm. He armored down.

"I...I am sorry…!" he whimpered. His shoulders shook. Warm tears dripped down now-flesh cheeks, stinging the hunk of viscera in between the two friends and mingling with the coppery puddle below. He leaned against the claws like they were a support, drawing a worried hiss out of Logan.

"Just set me down, Pete," the older of the two repeated slowly. "Put me down. I won't be mad, promise. We can work through this, yeah? Come on, big guy…"

Logan wouldn't forget the look in those big, blue eyes. They were desperate, framed with bags that did little to deny his lack of sleep. Scared, like a beaten animal, hungry for a glimmer of compassion. Looking at him like Logan was gonna save him somehow. Like he was salvation.

"'m sorry."

It was the last phrase uttered before the tips of Logan's claws met air once again. 

No time to gasp. No time for thought.

If Logan's claws had more nerve endings, he might have felt the clench of his friend's throat as it tried, fruitlessly, to inhale just once more. Blood poured between chapped lips like a mockery of a Greek fountain statue.

There was tumbling. The two ended up in a bloody wet heap on the floor. Someone was gagging, choking, drowning in crimson. There was angry screaming. Pleading. It might as well be happening to someone else, though. Somebody thousands of miles away. 

His friends would find them. Him and the corpse. They would figure out what had happened. It wouldn't matter. Wouldn't bring him back. Even if it did, it wouldn't stop this moment. 

Logan didn't take the claws from the corpse's throat yet. He didn't feel like hearing the horrible, sinewy squelch it would make. Piotr's body stopped writhing.

So, Logan laid there, gingerly removing the still-tight grip of those big mitts with his one free hand. It was minimally easier now that there was no force behind the hold, now that the hands were loose, cold, and flesh. 

He wrapped the corpse's arms around him, laying his head down on the motionless chest beneath him and he slowly, carefully, removed the claws.

Muscle fiber and bone worked in overtime to heal, to grant Logan his arm back. Though he wouldn't wish his circumstances on anybody else, he would have given anything for Piotr's throat to snap back into place. For Petey to pull himself off the ground and remark on how stupid he'd been. The two of them could laugh and share another shot.

He wished he could work up the tears to cry. Petey deserved that much, at least… somebody to cry for him. Somebody to care. And he couldn't do it. He just couldn't. He had been dried up years ago. There was no sense to be found here. There are, after all, hundreds of deaths every minute. This was just one of them.

If it had been somebody else with Petey, maybe someone like Ro or Kurt, this wouldn't have happened. 

But it was Logan. Logan, who only shook his head and pulled himself off the body of his comrade. Logan, who dragged himself to the bar. Logan, who grabbed his glass and picked up where he left off. Logan, who would wait in this dark place and not think about anything.

A shot glass sat on the counter next to him, a cocktail mix of spirits and blood, and it would sit there until it was good and cold.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a habit of 1.) posting my writings only when I'm exhausted and, 2.) vomiting a bunch of angsty whinging type stuff that I project on to a character on to a page and calling it good. That is what this fic is, my good reader. Thank you for sticking with me this far, let's see how long it takes me to pick this apart in a rage of perfection or delete it entirely.


End file.
